


Marked

by YoGrossDude



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoGrossDude/pseuds/YoGrossDude
Summary: Erend’s soulmark is written in something no one can read.





	Marked

**Author's Note:**

> the soulmark au no one asked for or wanted
> 
> this is extremely rough so apologies in advance. All-Mother bless you if you manage to wring some enjoyment out of it
> 
> also I am 99% sure somebody's done an Erend/Aloy version of this already but I couldn't find anything so shoutout to you, mystery progenitor

Erend’s soulmark is written in something no one can read.

It happens, sometimes. You turn old enough, your mark shows up, and it’s some weird set of squiggles from a tribe that’s likely halfway across the world, the name of someone you’ll never see. Just bad luck, as they say, and in the Claim the most sympathy you’ll get is a shrug. Nothing to be done about it, why waste good time that could be spent doing something else. The Carja write poems about it, so he hears, flowery laments of exquisite longing, but Carja write poetry about everything anyway, and equally tearful ones about slag as mundane as a sunset.

He likes how it looks, even though he’ll probably never figure out what it says: the foreign letters are blocky, bold, like they mean to be noticed whether someone likes it or not. It’s long, too, running almost the entire length of his forearm.

 _Oh, this?_   he says to nearly every tavern girl whose eyes linger on it just a little too long, _Just my mark. Haven’t been able to figure it out yet. Think you can read it for me?_

They can’t, of course. Nobody can. But it doesn’t stop them from trying, and it certainly doesn’t stop him from asking.

Some people in his situation go searching for their soulmates anyway, with nothing but a mark they can’t even understand to guide them. Most never come back; anyone who does comes back alone. Erend, however, decided to look at it as something freeing: clear permission to do whatever the hell he wanted -- nobody to disappoint, after all. Other than Ersa, anyway, and he was doomed to disappoint her the second he drew his first breath.

Besides, it’s not like it really matters. People who never meet their soulmates aren’t condemned to some kind of half-life -- despite all their poetry, the Carja nobility marry out of soulmarks all the time, and even if the Banuk growl about it being your “life’s true challenge,” the reality of living in the Cut likely means the owner of a mark of your name was killed by anything from an ice storm to a pissed-off machine before you ever met them.

No, the only people who really care about it are the Nora, who outline their marks with bright blue paints, whisper for the blessings of their All-Mother to help them find the other half of their souls. Maybe that’s why he volunteers to join the expedition to the Savage East as extra muscle. It’s different from everybody else. The Nora really treat their marks as something special.

And though he’d never admit it, Erend thinks that’s sort of _nice_.

 

* * *

 

She has hair as red as rust and green eyes that strike just as sharp as those infamous Nora arrows, and she’s talking to Olin.

He wants to talk to her, too.

Olin leaves the scene a little hastily once he hops off the stage, but being alone with her is far from the worst thing in the world. She likes the fact he stopped Irid from getting slammed with fruit, but expertly avoids or ignores anything he lobs her way. Still, she’s curious, about the Oseram, Meridian, the world outside the Sacred Lands, which is a stark difference from every other Nora he’s spoken with so far. He stumbles right into the reason why like an idiot when he laughs about her somehow not knowing anything about the Red Raids.

“I grew up as an outcast,” she tells him, clearly annoyed, “shunned by the tribe.”

“Oh.” He shifts against the feeling of the pit of his stomach falling out. “Yeah, I’ve heard the Nora do that. Seems cruel, if you ask me.” Which she didn’t, but that’s not a lie, and not something made up just for her.

It doesn’t stop her flood of questions; her eyes light up when he answers and it’s more than worth it. Then she starts asking more about Olin, so this time, maybe a little petulantly, he makes sure to mention Olin’s family.

Maybe there’s a different reason she asks so many questions. Out of pure curiosity, while they’re talking, he steals a glance at the inside of her wrist.

There’s nothing there.

Not a mark that’s illegible, like his, or covered up with anything, like the scar that makes Ersa’s impossible to read: it’s blank, which is the weirdest thing he’s ever seen. She’s certainly old enough to have one - the Nora don’t make children run through their Provings - the only explanation is that it somehow never showed up at all.

Only that’s impossible.

“There something else you wanted?” she asks curtly, crossing her arms over her chest and very deliberately putting her wrist out of sight.

“Nah,” he says, and gives her his best smile, raising an eyebrow, “Unless...you did?”

She frowns and rolls her eyes at that one, and then they part ways to make their respective treks to the Blessing, where he gets to overhear her name from one of the Matriarchs.

_Aloy._

Otmur wants to bet on who the winner of the Proving will be; Erend makes sure to keep it discreet, positive that the Nora Matriarchs won’t take it well, even if he’s sure the other Nora are doing the same thing, and Otmur puts all his shards on the blonde kid with the constantly curled upper lip and bad attitude like an idiot.

“The flame-hair girl’s going to win, easy,” Erend says, rattling a fistful of his own shards, “So thanks for the drinking money.”

Otmur snorts, throwing up a dismissive wave, frowning at his Nora brew even as he downs it, and it’s his fourth one.

“Erend, you’ve never picked a winner your whole life,” he says, which is only partly true.

“Olin’ll back me up on this one.” Erend turns to face him, grinning. “Right?”

There’s never been a bet Olin hasn’t liked as long as Erend’s known him, but he doesn’t even seem to notice this one going on right in front of his eyes. He’s staring at his own untouched cup of Nora brew, apparently lost in thought, keeps running his thumb over his Carja wife’s name marked on his other wrist, and doesn’t say anything at all.

Later, much later, when he’s haggard drunk and miserable, and she wrinkles her nose and narrows her eyes at him when he staggers to meet her at the gates of Meridian, Erend will find out that Aloy did win, right when it doesn’t matter anymore.

 

* * *

 

“Erend.” Aloy’s voice is the softest he’s ever heard it. “Erend, I’m so sorry.”

Ersa’s hand falls from his face to the filthy cell floor, and the world is brittle and broken, but there’s something inside him, hot as forge fire, and he grabs onto it, desperately, even as it burns him. “We’ve got to find Dervahl,” he says, from wherever the hollow place he is now, latches onto the image of breaking Dervahl in two, smashing his face into the dirt.

Aloy turns away to search for something they can use to hunt the bastard down, but not before giving him a troubled, lingering look Erend doesn’t have time to think about.

He looks back at Ersa, half-hoping she’ll somehow start breathing again. She doesn’t, though the blood continues to trickle out of her nose and mouth when he closes her eyes, and he has to clamp down hard on a wail of grief that tries to claw its way out of his throat.

Her forearm is bare, uncovered. It’s the first good look he ever gets at Ersa’s mark. _Cut myself forging_ , she told everyone, not too long after it appeared, and only Erend knew that was a lie: she was sneaking out to practice with a sword-wife, probably sliced herself at night with a blade while she was training. But now he can see the scar isn’t the jagged, accidental line it should be. It’s precise, put there with deliberate care, and it neatly runs over what he recognizes now as parts of flowing Carja glyphs and halves the telltale circle of the Sun.

To his credit, Avad doesn’t even try to lie when Erend asks him later, well after Aloy prevents Meridian from going up in flames and stops Dervahl just short of murdering him in his palace, when just the thought of her is starting to make Erend breathless. He pulls away rows of shining bangles on his forearm with a wan smile, revealing Ersa’s name, bright as polished steel, etched onto his skin.

“It was part of the reason my father invaded your lands,” he says, sounding bitter and so, so tired, “To find his son his promised bride.”

They talk for a long while after that. And cry, too, but that’s less important.

 

* * *

 

_I’ll always have a minute for you. Maybe even two._

That’s the memory that gets Erend to the Claim and through Ersa’s funeral and then back again - Aloy, half-smiling, the fading sunlight in her hair. It shouldn’t be, but it is, and he glances at his wrist once they’re back in front of the gates of Meridian, the big, bold, inscrutable letters shining in the dawn’s light, and all of a sudden he _hates_ it.

It’s like a bad joke, wearing the name of someone he’s been forged for that he can’t even read. He wonders if they’re anything like him, staring at the impossible puzzle on their arm and doing little more than shrugging at it, going on with their life like there isn’t any problem at all. Just bad luck, as they say, why waste good time that could be spent doing something else.

Fire and Spit, Erend _hates_ whoever his mark is for, because he’s certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they’re no one compared to her.

 

* * *

 

A Shadow Carja army swarms upon Meridian, bristling with enormous, alien machines more terrifying than anything Erend’s ever seen in his life, and Aloy beats all of them back.

Not all by herself, of course, but it may as well have been.

There’s no shortage of work to be done to rebuild the city when it’s all finally over: gathering lumber, piling stone, making sure there’s enough food to go around. But everyone pulls together, Carja and Oseram and Banuk and Nora, and it only takes a couple of months before Meridian starts to almost look like home again.

Aloy stays to help throughout it all, smirks at his jokes and rolls her eyes at his flirting and puts jumping sparks in his belly whenever he does something as daring as stand next to her.

There’s a time when their hands bump together, by accident, and he couldn’t think about anything else for two days.

She’ll be leaving soon. They both know it, but Erend plasters a stupid grin on his face and pretends it doesn’t bother him. He starts to wrap his head around idea of not seeing her in the mornings anymore. Not laughing at her wry wit. Not watching her carry building stone without a single complaint, or hand out spare cakes of cornmeal to the kids that inevitably show up, or see her at the end of the day with the tired, satisfied smile he likes to think is just for him.

It stings, and bad, and she’s not even gone yet.

His solution is to try and slowly wean himself off her presence. Get used to her not being there, so maybe it won’t hurt so much when she’s gone. So for the first time, he doesn’t try to catch her in the morning to talk, deliberately works on stacking lumber when he finds out she’s helping mix cement, and sits, alone, picking at the slop that’s passing for dinner.

All in all, a pretty terrible slag of a day.

He’s absently tracing the pattern of his soulmark into the dirt with a stick, bored out of his mind, when the sound of footsteps get him to turn around. And when he sees a flash of red hair and a raised eyebrow, a sharp pang lodges itself just above his heart.

Maybe she’ll let him come with her, when she leaves, Erend thinks, a little desperately, but before he can say anything, she catches sight of the letters he’s dug into the dirt.

“What is that?” she demands, pale as snow, “What are you writing?”

Her reaction is alarming, makes him feel oddly guilty, but he’s got no idea why. “Uh, my mark?”

He peels off his gauntlet to prove it, holding his arm out for her to see, and Aloy stares at it, wide-eyed, her mouth working soundlessly.

“What’s wrong? Can you read it?” The words come out breathless, hovering somewhere between hope and fear, but Aloy doesn’t reply, focused entirely on words on his skin. She lunges forward, grabbing his arm, reading it over and over again.

“Elisabet Sobeck,” she whispers, tracing the letters with her fingertips, sending little shocks sparking across his skin, “It says Elisabet Sobeck.”

 

* * *

 

 

Aloy still leaves, despite whatever the hell his mark means to her. He tries, and fails, not to be bitter. The world won’t save itself, after all.

She doesn’t come back to Meridian until next spring.

His heart leaps into his throat the moment he sets eyes on her, even though she wears a pained, uneasy look not even his best jokes can crack through. It stops all of his practiced lines dead in water, and she presses her lips into a thin line, places an ancient trinket into his palm.

“I want to show you something,” she tells him, low and serious, “About your mark.”

They’re sitting together in Olin’s old apartment when she leans in, close enough to make his breath catch, to put the jewel - a _Focus_ , she calls it - right in front of his ear. It doesn’t seem to do anything other than create dancing patterns of light and hovering messages in a scrawl he can’t read, but Aloy promises to teach him how to use it, one day.

But before she gets to his mark, she has to tell him something first.

She’s already told him several impossible things ever since the Shadow Carja marched on Meridian, but nothing, nothing like this. She explains, without meeting his eyes, that the Old Ones could somehow make copies of _people_ , even get the cast of someone’s shape to build them later, brand new, in some unfathomable machine.

Aloy is one of these copies.

“That’s probably why I don’t have a mark,” she continues flatly, like they’re just talking about the weather, but catches her quickly wiping at her eyes and his heart aches, “Because I wasn’t really born. Just...made.”

This is a lot to take in. Even still, there’s one thing he’s absolutely sure about.

“You know that doesn’t change anything.”

A small, sad smile pulls at the corner of her mouth.

“It _doesn’t_ ,” he insists, firm, “It doesn’t change anything about who you are or what you’ve done. For me, or anyone else.” And he means it. He’ll happily say it a thousand times over until it’s well-hammered into her ears.

She shrugs, and he frowns. This isn’t over, but she clearly wants to move on, so he drops it, for now, anyway.

Aloy weaves her fingers through the air, and the image of a woman appears in front of him, made from light, and he can see right through her like a pane of glass.

“This is Elisabet Sobeck,” Aloy says, her voice wavering, and Erend blinks at the image in surprise, leans in for a closer look. Her clothes are strange and she looks older, but there’s something about her eyes that’s oddly compelling. On her wrist is a mark, but it’s definitely not his name, or anything that looks like a name at all: it’s a block of small circles and vertical lines arranged in a weird sort of pattern.

“So she was an Old One?” he asks, trying not to sound too crushed - after all, if it wasn’t for Aloy, he’d never know anything about her at all. Still, he can’t quiet the stupid little voice inside him screaming that it isn’t _fair_ , that it’s not how this should work. It feels like someone’s having the time of their life designing brand-new types of cruelty just for him: first he thinks Ersa’s dead, then finds out she’s alive, only so she can breathe her last in his arms hours later, and now he’s cursed with wearing the name of someone who’s been dead long before he was even born.

Aloy nods. She stands right next to this light-forged version of Elisabet Sobeck, staring at her with pensive, quiet longing, but it’s not until she heaves a soft sigh when it finally hits him, hammer-hard, right in the chest.

“Elisabet Sobeck.” The name is clunky, awkward, on his tongue, but it feels _right_ , like he’s somehow been holding his breath his whole life, always just waiting to say it. “Elisabet Sobeck is _you_.”

“I’m not her _exactly_.” But she’s smiling at him when he closes the space between them, and slowly, hesitantly, she takes his hands in hers, threads their fingers together. “Just a copy of her. And I don’t really have any idea how this is supposed to work, since I won’t ever have a mark, but --”

He pulls her close, then, and her arms wrap around him fierce and tight, and it feels like what he’s been forged for, what he’s always been meant to do. He buries his face into her hair, chokes out a laugh and a sob mixed together, and she smells like fresh earth and sharp pines and the air just before a storm.

And the world finally, _finally_ , starts to make some kind of sense.

 

 

 


End file.
